Kelvin Carpenter is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Paul J. Medford from 12 March 1985 to 3 September 1987.

His family are reunited later that year when Hannah arrives, telling her father and brother, that her mother's current boyfriend Neville Agard (Gordon Case) has been beating them both.

Hannah had always looked down on Tony's way of life and although they try to make their marriage work, they bicker regularly so Kelvin is often forced to take on the role of mediator.

Kelvin spends most of his spare time with the other youngsters of Albert Square: Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt), Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean) and Michelle Fowler (Susan Tully).

During the latter part of 1986, Kelvin attends college and makes some new friends, including Harry Reynolds (Gareth Potter) and Tessa Parker (Josephine Melville).

He dates Tessa briefly and his new friends' radical political beliefs and influence seems to have an effect on the way Kelvin views life too.

In order to escape the constant rows at home, Kelvin spends a lot of time with Carmel Roberts (Judith Jacob) and eventually the two start dating, much to his parents' dismay.

Holland and Smith knew that for the soap to succeed there needed to be a varied group of characters, so that several different sections of the audience had someone to identify with.

Even though the ethnic minority groups were deemed the hardest to research, Holland and Smith called upon their contacts to relay information about their origins and lifestyles and were then able to portray Walford's most recent immigrants more realistically.

[1] The character of Kelvin remained in the show for over two years, and was eventually written out when Paul Medford decided to follow his ambition of becoming a singer/dancer on stage in 1987.

[2] However, the way that EastEnders treated their black characters during the 1980s has been criticized by Robert Clyde Allen, author of the book To be Continued--: Soap Operas Around the World.

"[4] Before he was written out of the serial in May 1987, actor Oscar James, who played Kelvin's father Tony, controversially criticised EastEnders and the BBC for not promoting their black characters.

In a school-based study (1986) examining black representation on television from 1985 to 1986, a storyline featuring Kelvin Carpenter was used to assess how the character was perceived.

The aim was to measure whether Kelvin was being portrayed as "normal" as opposed to a "trouble-maker", a category black people on television were typically labelled as prior to the 1980s.